Harley & Me, a pet service enterprise based in Chennai, runs a hotel for dogs. Among its facilities is a luxury suite that its canine occupant need not share with another, a room for a human (and his pets, if any) who wants to spend time with dogs. A human-friendly pet café is in the pipeline, says its founder Arunodaya Reddy.

Then there’s Doggie Dabbas, which provides dogs with customised meals that are homecooked. Founder Rashee Kuchroo is a parent to six dogs herself. When she realised her Labrador was not doing well on packaged dog food, she qualified in pet nutrition to be able to care better for her pet. She makes cakes for dogs too.

The change in the country’s socio-economic profile, with the rise of nuclear families, city living, growing incomes and stress, which has people looking for outlets for rest and recreation has led to a rising number of people raising pets. Not just that, their owners are going a long way to treat them as preciously as they would a family member. One hears of rich men and women in the West bequeathing their all to their pets. Compared to the US’s $57-billion petcare market, India may be a long way off, but there are quite a few people willing to pamper them with spa treatments, personalised clothes, blingy collars and foam beds, among others.

www.tailslovegiftstoo.com is a web site where people can order gift hampers made up of food and toys for dogs and cats. Prices range from Rs 999 to Rs 3,999. Founder Somdatta Sengupta, who quit her corporate job to set up this venture, hit upon the idea when she was touring Europe and saw a dog being gifted a hamper from his doggie pal. “People are becoming very experimental, and keep asking, what more can we do for our pets,” she says, explaining that this is good news for businesses in petcare.

Vasundhara Mazumdar, an Indore-based copywriter, has shopped for hampers at this website. She owns nine dogs, three adults and six puppies. She takes them to a “very nice spa” twice a month for grooming, which includes hairdressing and nails, buys them treats and toys of cookies and chewy bones, gets new jackets for them every winter, and has a special bed for them. The hoodies they wear are a style statement, she says, and they have T-shirts too. She spends about Rs 20,000 on them every month.

Sudhakar Cherukuru, co-founder of Chennai-based Cho Chweet pet salon, says he and his business partner, a dog lover, hit upon the idea of a salon in 2010 when they saw a magazine article about dog colouring in China – there was a photo of one made up to look like a tiger. (They don’t encourage colouring, though.) “Grooming is not a style statement,” he says. “Our pet is the first to greet us at the door so it should be clean and pleasant-smelling. Also, in today’s mostly single-child families, a pet is the after-school companion, and has to be given due credit,” he says. Cho Chweet has packages ranging from Rs 750 to Rs 2,500 based on nine dog sizes, and has around 150 customers every month now.

Rana Atheya, founder of www.dogspot.in, a portal that aims to meet all needs of pets, ranging from dogs and cats to birds and hamsters, says there has been a huge growth in petcare services in the last 3-4 years. His business has been growing 100 per cent year on year. He raised two rounds of funding from angel investors and venture capitalists (….) Westernised education had children seeing pets as companions and feeling that a family is not complete without them, he says, adding that they are the prime movers for families getting pets.

“Premiumisation” marks all categories including petfood in this business, he says. While companies such as Mars and Drools have a market in the country, they cannot encourage more consumption to a single dog because it can only eat a limited amount, he says.

Nitin Kulkarni, Director, Corporate Affairs at Mars International India, maker of the Pedigree brand, says even after 12 years in India and healthy category growth, “we feel we have barely managed to scratch the surface in terms of penetration into pet parent households or significantly change the consumption habits of their pets”. This despite the petfood sector now growing in double digits.

Vikas Kumar of pet food company Drools says they slowly realised pet owners don’t know much about pet nutrition or appreciated the breed-specific formulae they were making. So they launched dog food common to all breeds, with the only variation being ‘puppy’ and ‘adult’. They have also launched a brand, Pure Pet, which is priced so as to encourage pet parents to use commercial dog food. Kumar estimates the dog food market is around Rs 600-700 crore. Only 6-7 per cent of pet owners use commercial dog food, he says.

The view that pet owners do not have much information on pet care finds voice in many of the people that cat.a.lyst spoke to. Arunodaya Reddy of Harley & Me says pet owners rely on friends and neighbours for information. The market in India is growing not because people are spending more on dogs but because the number of pet parents is increasing. He meets a new puppy at his store Pet 101 every day, he says.

In fact, estimates of the petcare market’s size differ from person to person. One estimate puts the number of cared-for pets at 2 million while another says 8 million. An oft-quoted statistic in some reports is Euromonitor’s Rs 800-crore projection of the petcare industry’s size by 2015. Another estimate puts the market size at Rs 1,700 crore this year. Dogspot’s Atheya says per capita spend on pets is growing at 15 per cent per year, and will touch Rs 17,000 in 2019 from Rs 8,500 now. He estimates the pet population is growing at 25 per cent year on year.

Canine behaviourist Sindhoor Pangal of Bangalore Hundeskole says people want to make a statement when they go out with their pets and this is why pet socialisation and training is becoming important. Pangal focuses on rehabilitation and therapy for troubled dogs, and says understanding dog ethnology is a big market in India right now. A growing trend is adoption of pets, whose parents thereafter reach out to behaviourists. “They find it worth giving these pets a chance, and this is also adding to the market,” she says. Pangal, who trained in Norway, charges Rs 1,000 per hour as consultation fees.

It’s raining cats and dogs, and it’s raining opportunity as well in the petcare industry, especially for those who want to marry passion and profession. Follow the scent!

Correction

The name of dog food company Drools was misspelt as Droolz.